The Phantom Empire

Movies in the Mind of the 20th Century

The Phantom Empire is a brilliant, daring, and utterly original book that analyzes (even as it exemplifies) the effect that the image saturation of a hundred years of moving pictures have had on human culture and consciousness.

In his intense and mysterious evocation of (seemingly) every kind of movie ever made, Geoffrey O’Brien erases the distinction between spectator and commentator, and virtually reinvents film writing in our time.